Mr. Cere you have eloquently put most of my feelings to paper, great job!

I enjoyed all of it, but appreciated your take on Peter Jackson and his role in all of this. To me, many have cast him aside since the announcement as just another director. But as you pointed out, he is not when it comes to this source material. And I do feel he has proven that he wants to make the best possible movies of this wonderful source material.

I also believe he has learned from mistakes made while filming LOTR. And now that he wields more power and authority, he will not make the same mistakes again. I fully trust that the decision to increase to three is so he can bring his vision to film in its entirety. It has never been said publicly (that I know of), but I think Return of the King while a magnificent film, was not exactly what he wanted. But he had to fit everything in, and much ended up on the cutting room floor much to his chagrin.

That does not mean everyone will love his adaptation and consider it canon. It is not and was never billed as a direct adaptation of the single book.

However, if there is something I am not sure I agree with, it is the hoops everyone has to go through because of the switch to three. Marketing and the like will be unaffected at such an early stage I would think. There hasn't been any of that for the 2nd movie yet. And I do not believe that the first movie marketing, title etc.. has been changed at all.

In fact the first movie might not be affected at all. The decision to stretch from two to three, might have been decided while looking at film two. Film one is probably virtually complete. But looking at all the content for film two, it might have felt rushed or too jam packed for him. Now he can take his time hashing out all the events. He didn't want a redo of the battle of Pellenor fields, then the march to the black gate feeling like they occurred the within a 24 hour period!